"Two state deputy police officers, Deputy Nick Ross (Frank Como) and Deputy Tom Farrah (David Ursin), who were ordered o follow Tina, drove her to the Tower Farm party.You listen to this.I want this understood once and for all.I'm not going to the convention.I'm going to the mountains.Mrs.Hardy ends her harsh, forcible opinions about how she is under-appreciated by threatening: "Convention! You'll go to the convention over my dead body.The next morning, Max and Gyro were awakened by noises of vehicular activity around the refinery.Max watched from afar as a group of townsfolk (in four vehicles going in opposite directions) left the compound (on a sortie).The wind rifled the pages back to Monday, October 24, 1955, a year earlier, to flash-back to events that led up to the tragedy.The town's weak-willed police chief Harry Bleeker (Robert Keith) is overwhelmed by the disturbance and ineffective at stopping the escalating rowdiness ("It was an accident, I saw it").